


Liberate

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 22:46:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10449225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: Tamika was never much of a reader Before.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Archiving old fic from 2013 - I actually haven't listened since ep 33, from the looks of things, so everything I post will likely be terribly non-canon-compliant. No comment spoilers, please--I do intend to get caught up!
> 
> I needed some instafluff after talking about "things I have read what totally depress me." *laughs* **hobbit** requested Reilly and Tamika Flynn having some awesome time together, books optional, because we both agree that science ladies are, in fact, awesome. I chose to make it books integral. XD

It's not like she's never wondered about the scientists. What they do, why they're here, where they're from. What it's like in places that aren't Night Vale. It's that they're just...there. She sees them at the Ralphs sometimes, spots the one Cecil likes always where she least expects him to be, finds them all clustered together some nights at a single booth at Big Rico's. Shop talk swirls around them everywhere they go, and except for Carlos, they rarely go anywhere alone. They're always in pairs, or threes, or in a mob. Safety in numbers; for scientists, they're pretty smart.

One of the women has wavy black hair and fierce green eyes, skin too pale for the desert and a growing crop of freckles. She's the shortest, the skinniest, and she walks everywhere like she's going into battle. _Before,_ Tamika would watch her stride down the street and feel a tug behind her ribs, the urge to march too.

_During,_ when the tug inside her chest was her own certainty of what needed to be done, she'd stalked along the shadowed corridors of the ancient library stacks with a snap in her stride and a lift to her chin she'd finally understood from the inside out.

It's not like she's never wondered about the scientists. It's just that she's never thought of them as anything to do with her until _After._

***

Sixth grade English is weird. Not like her Spanish class is; it's the way her teacher keeps trying to teach two different classes as the same time. They're supposed to be reading _The Red Badge of Courage,_ only trauma insensitivity has been made illegal this month, and the teacher doesn't know where to look. Not at Tamika, and not at the three other kids who were in the library with her. He doesn't even assign them books.

That's okay. She's already read it. It was on her sticker chart, after all.

She picks up someone else's copy at the lunch table and flips through it. She remembers every chapter, but the words are just words; she still doesn't know what all the fuss is about. She hadn't been much of a reader, _Before._ Young adult novels irritate her and the classics are just frustrating: so many people behaving in incredibly stupid ways. She'd have sworn she hated reading, but _During_...well, she'd still hated it, but it hadn't been as hard as she'd expected.

The teacher hands her a test with a perfect score of 100% already red-inked across it when it's time for the final quiz. She fills it out anyway, knowing she's getting every answer right, satisfaction a bright, almost vindictive knot behind her ribs. She _knows_ this. She's earned it. And she'll earn that perfect score, too.

Later in the year, when the class starts reading _A Separate Peace,_ the teacher hands her a book.

She hates every page of it.

***

Biking home from school one day, she finds the scientists have vacated their lab. Not permanently--Carlos is already arguing with the fire crew, who stand in the middle of the street giving each other desperate, helpless looks that mean Carlos will be getting his way sooner than later--but the pale blue flames hissing columns of cold steam into the air through the open windows make the place pretty uninhabitable at the moment. The other scientists have already headed over to Big Rico's, the way they always do during an evacuation, and after a moment Tamika walks her bike across the street and leaves it propped against the wall by the door.

They're at their booth again, the three men leaning over a device that makes Big Rico eye them sidelong, which means he probably hasn't gotten any explanation for the fire yet. The taller woman, the one with the kind smile and the patient eyes, is dissecting an anchovy with a scalpel she must have brought with her; Big Rico doesn't hand those out to just anybody.

The scientist Tamika now knows is named Reilly is reading a book.

She's not sure why that stuns her like it does. Reilly's smart. She's a scientist. She argues concepts Tamika has barely even heard of as confidently as she wields an iron pipe. It's just that Tamika has seen her fight, the way the others look to her for tactics the way they look to Carlos for direction. She's seen _herself_ in Reilly, and she can't help wondering if her failure to appreciate the written word is a bigger failure than she realizes.

She's been still for too long. Reilly notices--she's _good_ \--and looks up, sharp eyes settling on Tamika and relaxing into a smile.

"What are you reading?" Tamika blurts before she knows she means to. She's sure it'll be something impressive like Tolstoy or Hugo or Alhazred.

Reilly huffs a laugh and holds up her book so Tamika can see the cover. It says _Cycles of Time,_ by Roger Penrose.

"Just a few theories," Reilly says, "which have _nothing_ to do with those clocks."

"Urgh, those _clocks_ ," agrees the youngest of the three men without looking up. Tamika ignores him.

"Then what _is_ it about?"

Reilly's brows arch, but she answers with a shrug. "Well...basically it talks about how the Universe will eventually expand to the point where things are stretched so thin and over such huge distances that time itself stops working. And that becomes the setting for the next Universe to form."

Tamika feels her jaw drop. She's pretty sure she's just stopped breathing. Reilly tilts her head, her brows drawing together in concern, and Tamika appreciates it, she really does. Someone ought to be concerned when you have an epiphany, because not everyone comes back from those.

"You have a _book_ about that?" she asks reverently.

The woman sitting next to Reilly glances over as Reilly breaks into a grin, her own smile fond and knowing.

"How much math do you have?" Reilly asks, the way most people ask about ammunition.

"Algebra?" she replies hopefully.

"Hm. We've got some Kip Thorne around here somewhere, don't we?" Reilly asks, looking at the others.

"Try Carlos' office," says the man Tamika thinks of as Team Dad, trying not to smile. "He's been, uh...working on a more layman-friendly approach to talking about science these days, and if you're going to learn...."

"Learn from the best," Reilly agrees with a brisk nod. "That's a pretty good place to start."

Tamika abhors Austen. She despises Dostoyevsky. If she ever sees another copy of _Cry, the Beloved Country,_ she will set it _on fire_ and dance around it widdershins.

But she doesn't hate reading. She absolutely doesn't hate _knowing._

She thinks she could very easily fall in love with _finding out._

When she goes home that night, she has two thick books in her backpack that didn't come from school and probably aren't on any municipally-approved list, and she stays up half the night devouring a feast of words she never knew she was missing.

At the breakfast table the next morning, her mother presses the backs of her fingers to Tamika's brow. "Did you sleep okay?" she asks, worried.

Tamika smiles. She's never felt better.

She says, "I want to be a scientist."


End file.
